Convention swag. Star Wars Books has revealed some of the summer freebies on their Facebook. There’s a nifty 84-page sample books with excerpts and the Insider short stories, a Mercy Killiron-on and Scoundrels bookmarks. The catch: There are 7, but they won’t all be available at the same con, so unless you’re going to be at SDCC, CVI and NYCC, prepare to swap with some pals to get them all.

The Death Star has just been destroyed and Han Solo still needs the money to pay off the bounty on his head. Now the opportunity to make that money and then some has walked into his life in the form of the perfect heist. With nine like-minded scoundrels, he and Chewbacca just might be able to pull it off and live to tell the tale!

The listing also mentions a wraparound cover featuring the eleven (ha) scoundrels, and calls it the “perfect” entry for casual fans.

(Also, we now have a tag for the book. It’ll change when we get an actual title, but thanks to StarWars-Union.de ‏for the MUPPETS suggestion.)

We got a lengthy update from Del Rey’s Frank Parisi today, and what’s most of interest to our particular readership is probably the cancellation of Alex Irvine’s Nomi Sunrider novel, one of the few upcoming projects featuring a female protagonist. The novel was known – tentatively – as Mandorla and apparently featured Mandalorians. (Which takes a bit of the sting out of the news, I must say.)

The rest of the post is a few details of Drew Karpyshyn’s next Old Republic novel, including the title, Annihilation. It also has a release date, November 13, and features Republic agent Theron Shan, from the comic The Old Republic: The Lost Suns.

The year of Maul, indeed. Dark Horse’s Randy Stradley announced two upcoming projects featuring Darth Maul yesterday. Up in August will be a digest, The Sith Hunters, from Henry Gilroy and Steven Melching. There’s also an four-issue mini-series from Tom Taylor that we’ll learn about in “the near future.” (Celebration, maybe?) Stradley also reveals that the Maul storyline will bridge S4 and S5 of The Clone Wars.

Curious… A new book appeared on the Random House site this week: Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars by author and cultural critic Camille Paglia. It’s set for an October release.

Excerpt. This week’s mini-excerpt is from Jeff Grubb’s Scourge. It features Wookiees slapping droids around a bunch of other people I’ve never heard of.

Interviews. Graphic Novel Reporter talks to John Jackson Miller about Knights of the Old Republic: War. On that note, the last standalone Lost Tribe of the Sith story is now available for preorder. (Yes, it’s still free, it just won’t be out until March 5.)

Essential art. Del Rey’s Erich Schoeneweiss gave fans a first look at some of the art from The Essential Guide to Warfare. They include an “an ancient battle between the Rakatans and the Killiks” by Darren Tan, an OTish space battle by Paul Youll (who did the covers for the X-Wing novels), and a Dark Empire World Devastator by Stephan Martiniere.

Coming out tomorrow is our second-to-last Star Wars novel of the year, Drew Karpyshyn’s The Old Republic: Revan. In the meantime, you can check out a 50-page excerpt or a spoiler-free review from Pete at Lightsaber Rattling. Or, if you’ve been sitting around and boggling at the excitement this novel has been generating, here’s some psuedo-learning for you instead: All the Darths by Dan Wallace.

Something something Sith. Flavor-of-the-month The Old Republic: Revan was everywhere last week – in fact, I daresay we have shortage of other Expanded Universe news, which makes this the shortest roundup I’ve done in a while.

Inside the Sith Empire: Random House has a good chunk of the first chapter of The Old Republic: Revan up on its site. Drew Karpyshyn’s novel about the character from the Knights of the Old Republic game comes out in November. If there’s one thing to be said about the Sith Empire, it’s that the trains run on time, so they must be doing something right.